Honourable Jester

Lady Ingrid Einfassen: grows nine feet tall, speaks thunderously, and summons a double-bladed axe as a ‘lady’s favour’

Aabria/Thaisha Lloy: Oh, I’ll marry her.

Right. Okay. Episode 27. Hal and Yanessa and Thaisha and the play. I’ve only caught up, and I’m having a meltdown right now. Oh, you bitch. You manipulative insidious bitch.

This scene:

Yanessa: We feel that when, ah. The play ends and Azgra is still dominant. Azgra wins, the revolution fails, the rebellion fails. And it feels like it’s going to be an extremely tragic or sombre or … unfortunate ending. We would love if, at the end, yes, Phokeon dies, but if he were to die and merge with a universal force, something that would show that his life, his rebellion, was not spent in vain. But rather that, in struggling and failing, his soul was actually redeemed and rewarded.

Hal: I am with you. I am with you. I think, I would like to suggest, that that is implied.

Yanessa: Let’s make it explicit! And further, I think there are some moments of comedy that just don’t hit in the first act. I think that there’s an element that we would like to bring as well of … Phokeon communicates a lot towards his people. He keeps bringing it back to the Rungjani. But of course there will be many in your audience who are not themselves Rungjani. Perhaps if there was something that he referred to that there was a spirit moving upon him. Something that he almost didn’t understand why he was doing what he was doing. That there was something communicating to him.

Hal, keeping it together, trying to bend it back away from where this is going: Yearning for freedom.

Yanessa: Yearning for redemption. Yearning for salvation.

Thaisha, livid: Redemption against what? Redemption from what?

Yanessa: We are all sinners.

Thaisha: Sure, but … is that the focus … Mm. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. (towards Hal) This is your play. And, ah. My people’s history. So you guys can keep … That’s fine.

I have never felt such a towering rage at what comes out of this woman’s mouth. Not even during the false resurrection. Because Thaisha has it bang on. Thaisha knows exactly what this is.

Yanessa, these edits, are flat-out trying to co-opt the Shaper’s War.

Okay. There are … In the short term she’s trying to stall opening night. That’s quite obvious. She’s so insistent. There’s a short term goal, and she probably doesn’t actually expect the edits to go through, even with a judicious helping of veiled threat. Hal came here with a Lloy. So Yanessa probably doesn’t actually expect these to go through. The main short-term goal is to delay the play. But. Even just her saying them.

And Kother’ai isn’t talking about the Shaper’s War directly. It’s a previous, failed rebellion against Azgra. Which. Dangerous in itself, given the Falconer’s rebellion and it’s sudden fresh relevance recently. It’s probably half the reason why she suddenly can’t let the play go ahead, in the wake of everything that’s happened this past week. Thjazi was killed on Tachonis orders, Halovar likely wasn’t planning for it. She may have originally intended to let the play happen, gain some good grace, but with the mood in the city shifting rapidly, she cannot let a play go ahead about a failed rebellion flinging hope for a successful one forward into the future. It’s got far too much resonance right now, she needs the inhabitants of Dol Makjar to not get a head of revolutionary fervour up in the current climate. Hence the sudden kibosh on the play and the insistence that it be delayed.

Delayed, or changed. Or, ideally, both.

But whether or not she expects these changes to be carried out, the sheer fact of her asking for them is …

It’s vile. It’s so vile. And so insidious.

… The orcs did not rebel for their own sakes. They didn’t decide to rebel at all. They were moved to it by a mysterious force. By a universal truth, perhaps, that predates the Shapers, to which the Shapers themselves were returned, to whom all souls belong. The Shapers were evil, obviously, and the Shaper’s War was obviously correct, but it wasn’t the orcs, the Rungjani, who were responsible for that rightness, it was something else. Some force. Some force that, conveniently, Yanessa herself has a direct line to, that resurrected her from the dead only last night.

No wonder Thaisha was internally clawing at the walls. Yanessa is straight up trying to co-opt the Shaper’s War, the history of Thaisha’s people, their greatest and most terrible sacrifice, into propping up Yanessa’s own fucking fake-ass religion.

Oh, I wanted to rip her face off. Congratulations to both Hal and Thaisha for holding that together, because I have never felt such fury towards this woman as I did this conversation. To even suggest that. To a Lloy. To two Rungjani.

Hal’s play is a celebration of the orcish people, their sacrifice, their suffering. To the rebellious spirit that was always there in them, the longing for freedom, the determination to not only escape slavery but destroy their slaver, to stand and fight even against gods themselves in that cause, no matter how often they failed, how often they suffered, how often they were slaughtered. Phokeon’s rebellion failed. But the one that came later? Did not. And now this play, in honour of that failed rebellion, that first and failed attempt at freedom, takes place on the god’s own ground. They honour that long ago sacrifice while standing on Azgra’s own blood.

And Yanessa fucking Halovar … wants to suggest that maybe that wasn’t the orcs themselves at all. They weren’t people, they didn’t stand up for themselves, they were tools. They were moved. By a mysterious force. As tools to end an obvious evil.

An evil that no one else in the world objected to until the orcs took the choice of inaction out of everyone’s hands.

This goddamn colonial missionary white saviour goddamn fucking bullshit. All wisdom, all truth, comes from white (or in this case human) religion. Native people could not act for their own good, much less the good of all, unless they were guided to it by a much more … truthful, powerful, mysterious force, that incidentally happens to speak only through white human mouths.

Oh, I want to rip her face off. And she so good at what she does. Look at the city right now. The Lloy wing, the history of the Lloys and the Rungjani and the Shapers War, vanished and in limbo at the Archenade. The Revolutionary Council itself under direct attack, from Yanessa’s own mouth. And now this. This direct attack on the histories and stories of the orcish people. This displacement of their stories inside their own damned city. ‘There will be many in your audience who will not be Rungjani themselves’. Oh, you bitch.

The Tachonis are fighting a war of magic and force. The Halovar are fighting a war of culture.

... Well, you know, when you put it like that? Sure. Why not.

Also, I'm mid-voyage right now, and the second I hit the Stormbones, we sighted a lifeberg, and I got my usual Monster Hunter option to ram it and claim a piece. And. I think, just this once, just while I'm currently rammed to the gunwales with high explosives, that maybe I might skip that option? Just this once? Heh.

I just. I really wish. I know why he’s a set menace on the academic islands. I know. I get it. But I really wish the challenge at the end, at ‘Orthos is Coming’ 10, was not luck based but dangerous based. Because I really, really, really want to just wait there calmly on that shore, with my crew of extremely dangerous pirates, wait for him to come smirking smugly off his ship, beeline for him, punch him in the face seven or eight times, total his crew, board his ship, steal his shit, come calmly back off, leisurely make my way back to my ship, and zail sweetly off into the great black yonder.

No, I don’t have strong feelings about this man, why do you ask?

I just. He’s so annoying. So annoying. He aggravates me so much. Goddamn pirate ‘academics’ stealing other people’s research and pawning it off as their own. Zailing around with his goddamn ‘Fleet of Truth’ like the cut-rate fucking pirate he is, acting like a big shot like I don’t also have my own dedicated dock cradle at the Mourn. At least out at zee the challenges are dangerous based and I can drub the shit out of him every time. Well. Assuming he’s actually with his fleet instead of hiding back in London. You’re a disgrace to academics and to pirates, you lazy arse!

And on top of all that, he’s a Summerset boy. Because of course he is.

(Caveat: I have not seen Episode 27 yet, will have to wait for Monday, this is just from what we’ve seen up to Episode 26).

Bolaire, solicitously: Do we need a Comprehend Languages?

Murray, the lone dwarf of the cast, frazzled, frustrated, and highly fucking offended, gesturing pointedly down at herself: I speak dwarvish!

I barked laughter. I full on startled my family in the next room.

And, to be fair to Bolaire, he immediately cottoned on and politely bowed back out. But just. That was hilarious.

Halandil Fang: I’ve come to you with hat in hand. Do you want to invest in the city’s future?

Elodie D'vyen: … Well normally I need to see a business plan before I make an investment. *sighs* When we first got together, my grandmother, when she was still with us, um, made me make one promise. The promise that she asked me to make, she said, ‘Elodie, you come from means’, and, ah, though I did not follow in the family business, I had to make my own merchant’s company myself, she said: ‘If you’re going to couple with an actor, you have to think now about what you’re gonna say’. And I said, grandma, what do you mean? And she said, ‘you need to think about what you’re going to say when he asks you for money’. How much are we talking about, Hal?

Hal, with a rather wobbly smile: Not too much. A few hundred gold.

Elodie, startled: Oh! Oh, a few hundred gold? Oh, my god, yes.

Like, it’s so clear that she was braced for a much higher number. A few hundred thousand, maybe. Seed money for a commercial venture. She’s so clearly stunned by the low ball. And it’s funny. It is funny. But it’s also so fucking sad.

In the first place, because of the sheer disparity of expectations here. Hal is just trying to get enough to scrape together a food bank, enough money to feed (admittedly a couple hundred) people just long enough for other options to open up, so they won’t be dependent on the city’s cult leader for jobs after a mass firing happened in the wake of political shenanigans. The Schemers were there calculating, okay, 1 gold per person per day, just for a couple of weeks, just until we can get options lined up. Just so these people don’t have to immediately join a cult to feed their families. They’re there trying to work out how many jewels from their thieves’ stash they can sell to keep people afloat for even a week or two. A few hundred gold. We’ve just got to give them one or two weeks without starving.

And then here’s Elodie, who isn’t even nobility, just one of the better classes of merchant, and she’s clearly … Like. She was clearly expecting at least a few thousand here. Possibly because he’d framed it as an investment? Investing in the city’s future. Her reaction when it’s only a few hundred is so …

You can tell which of them is used to having a few hundred to throw around when needed, shall we say.

And then, on the more personal level …

You need to think now about what you’re going to say when he asks for money. How much are we talking about, Hal?

And the thing is, we’ve seen this before, shadows of this. Hal and Thaisha. Her reminding him, carefully, around what were clearly old wounds and old discussions, that while she knew he didn’t like it, the Lloy money was there for him if he ever needed it. And Hal … not saying much of anything in response.

There’s so clearly an expectation. A view of Hal in operation. ‘If you’re going to couple with an actor’. Hal is an entertainer, a kid from the Rookery, a troublemaker’s brother. And he has children with not one but two entirely separate ladies of much higher class and means than him. And Thaisha was first. So by the time he got to Elodie, there was clearly enough of an opinion of him circulating that Elodie’s grandmother took her aside to warn her. He’s a gold digger, honey. You’ve got to start thinking now about how much you’re willing to give him.

(Also, if you’re going to couple with an actor? Not be with him, not have a relationship with him. Just couple. As if sex is all there is to it. Ouch).

There’s a view of Hal happening here. And Hal is clearly conscious of it. He’s not surprised at Elodie saying what her grandmother told her. He just looks … wryly sad. All rueful acknowledgement and lopsided smile. That line of his that finishes the conversation:

“You are always too good for me. Your grandmother was a wise woman.”

… How much does it hurt, that so soon after it was all going well for him, after he’d finally gotten the deed to the Hallowed Round, after he’d finally managed to start making a more respectable name for himself, that everything came crashing down? His brother dead. The city abruptly under siege from seemingly every direction. His every dream under threat. And now …

Here he has to be. Hat in hand. Playing the damned gold digger, just like everyone’s always expected of him, and not even for himself. Just to try and keep the city afloat.

He doesn’t want to. We know he doesn’t want to. Thaisha wouldn’t have stepped half so carefully around that conversation unless she knew it hurt him. This wouldn’t clearly be the first time he’s ever asked Elodie for money, the first time she’s ever had to mention what her grandmother said, if he was at all easy about it. It clearly is a sore spot for him, if only one you have to be as close as Thaisha to notice, maybe. And it’s a sore spot that makes sense. There’s so clearly a view of him that’s developed, and not on purpose, not by anyone’s intention, it’s not Thaisha or Elodie’s fault that they were born to money, no more than it’s Hal’s fault that he wasn’t, but there is …

An actor. An entertainer. A lover. And both his baby mamas are women of means.

Yeah. There’s a reputation there, I think. And I don’t think Hal likes it. At all.

(A reputation probably not helped by whatever the hell happened with Thjazi and Aranessa’s marriage, too. Those Fang boys, huh. A whole family of gold diggers over there. Hold tight to your money, ladies, the Fang brothers are in town).

There is such a theme with the Schemers. The working nine-to-five. The ones born in poverty or struggle, the ones who know how to fight to make ends meet.

And yes, it was an illusion. It was a boogeyman image pulled up to cause fear, to cover up the scared and unready man beneath and give himself an advantage over an enemy he was facing all alone, the first time he’s taken up a blade by himself without someone actively beside him. He called up Azgra because of the theme of the gala and because Azgra is the boogeyman, not just to the orcs but to everyone. The god of war who used his children as a blade against the rest of the world.

But there’s something … Azgra was the god of war. He made his children as weapons. And when Hal needed to be a weapon, when he needed to fight, he called up his god’s face. Instinctively.

Because Hal is an orc. And Azgra was the Shaper of the orcs, and in so many ways he’s still the Shaper of the orcs. Because … Because no one ever quite escapes the legacy of how they were made, how they were raised, how they were shaped. Choices can be made. Always. New paths can be walked. A new world can be made. But maybe … maybe there’s always the memory of fingerprints in the clay.

And I’m just … I’m remembering that scene we saw in Episode 21. The flashback, a young Hal and Thaisha at the Lloy’s. The retelling of the first Farramh, the celebration born from Azgra’s death at his children’s hands, and the thanksgiving that they were immediately dared, forced, asked to give to the god they had just destroyed.

“He that seeks to destroy you is your teacher, and so we bless the Conqueror for his lessons, which were many.

We bless the Conqueror for his craft, for he shaped us not as children, but as weapons, and a weapon knows no doubt or hesitation.

We bless the Conqueror for his hunger, for in his appetite, he saw Aramán forever changed from what it was to what it might be.

A blessing to him, then, that the Rungjani reject peace in favour of a dream.

And we bless him above all else for his honesty, because of all the gods of Aramán, ours was the only one who never lied about what he truly was.

For his honesty, we bless him most of all.”

We bless him for his lessons. We bless him for his craft. For making weapons of us, so that we could fight even the gods themselves in the end. And we bless him for his honesty, for never lying about what he was.

Hal grew up with that. That story. That memory, told and retold. That lesson.

Azgra was a horror. Azgra was a terror. Azgra kept them in slavery. But he never lied about it. He shaped them in his image. He taught them how to fight. He taught them how to fight gods themselves if it came to it. He taught them how to subsume fear, how to face it, how to fight even when hope was dead and victory was impossible. He taught them everything they needed to kill him. Not intentionally, probably not intentionally, but the lesson was taught regardless, and they were perhaps somewhat cruelly grateful for it.

And when Hal had to fight. All alone, in the midst of this cavalcade of lies and deception and assassination, while his friends fought and possibly died somewhere close by, out of his reach. When Hal had to fight.

He wore the face of Azgra. Who did not lie, and who made weapons without fear.

And … And the funny thing is, Hal wore that face as a lie. An illusion of bravery, monstrosity, terror. The face of dead god to frighten a foreigner who brought terror and death into the heart of Dol Makjar, into the heart of Kahad, into Hal’s home. It was an instinctive reaction, just to pull up the face of a boogeyman. It was a lie.

But every truth starts with a lie. Into every mask we wear, we have to put at least a touch of our real face. Fingerprints in the clay.

There is something so tangled, and heavy, and complicated, and stained about the relationship between Azgra and his children, his people, his killers. He shaped them. He enslaved them. They hated him. They killed him. But when challenged on the spot, with his blood not yet cooled, they gave thanks to him, as honestly as they could, for the things he had, intentionally or not, given them, showed them, taught them. They thanked him for his honesty.

And seventy years down the line, in the midst horror and death and so many lies, an orc who loves stories, who loves the truths hidden in lies, who had put aside his blade and was forced to take it up again … chose Azgra’s face to show his enemies. Instinctively.

He who seeks to destroy you is your teacher. And so we bless the Conqueror for his lessons.

How hard it is, to be something other than what you were made to be.

But at the end of the day … Azgra’s face comes off. And Hal, the playwright, the wordsmith, the dreamer, all these things an orc under Azgra would never have been allowed to be, remains underneath.

We take the lessons we are taught. But we are always more than them. Or at the least, we always have the potential to be.

Sorry. That was just … such a weighted image. So off-the-cuff, and so heavy.

The orcs were shaped by the god of war. And while that is not all they are, they have fought and died and killed to prove it is not all they are … it is still part of what they are. They’ve moved past him, beyond him. They’ve killed him with their own hands, and with the lessons he himself taught them. There can be peace now, and art, and gentle things. But if war comes? If an orc still has to fight? Then Azgra’s face is still one they can choose to wear. Both as a lie, and as a truth.